Flag Day people, thanking them all

A message of thanks from Anthony Dent following our fantastic Flag Day party at Café Indie.

Once again this year the Flag Day party went ahead and was a huge success. A sell out 200 enjoyed the beer, pies and music. The raffle, sale of badges and a donation from the Café has raised £300. The Trust will be donating too with the proceeds being given to St. Luke’s school to go towards music equipment for their students. Many thanks to all who donated raffle prizes, or attended, for their support.

Many people help make this a great event and, as usual, they are unsung heroes with Iron Bru and myself collecting the honours and back slaps.

Firstly I’d like to thank John Needham from the Iron Trust. Without his help and his little note book we wouldn’t have this event.

Here’s a little bit about what the Trust do, and their aims.

The Iron Trust (Scunthorpe United Supporters Society) aims are:

Ensure fans are legal as well as moral stakeholders in the club, by owning shares and representing members at shareholder meetings.

Work to improve communication between our members and senior management at the club, ensuring a supporter voice is heard before key decisions are made. Informing policy-making at the club.

Contribute towards the long-term success of Scunthorpe United Football Club

The Iron Trust was formed in April 2012, after a process which began in August the previous year. With the backing of the football club, an open meeting was held at Glanford Park in December 2011 at which participants voted for the formation of the trust. Members have been able to join since July 2012.

Secondly, I’d like to thank the staff and management of Café Indie.As you may already know the Café is run as an employability project which takes young volunteers who are struggling in life, gives them a focus and helps them build towards real qualifications and hopefully future gainful employment. The success rate in this is astounding.

Over 70% of those who have gone through the Café have progressed onto full time employment or further education. I have personally seen awkward shy kids turned into bright enthusiastic young adults.

David Plumtree leads a fantastic team of staff and his enthusiasm for Flag Day has helped make this event such a huge success. We told him how we thought it should be and he just delivered it with no qualms – the staff were incredible.

Here’s a bit of a friendly reminder… You’ll probably know that quite recently the Café launched as a CO-OPERATIVE… Becoming a co-operative is BIG. But what does it actually mean?

It means they have a Membership Scheme. Here is a bit of blurb from the Café…

Because we’re a CO-OP our Members sort of “own” INDIE and can have a say in the running of INDIE. That means YOU, if you want it… We believe that if YOU believe in US – if you truly ‘get’ what INDIE is about and what it is that we’re doing – you’ll want to be a part of this new direction…

The Co-Op Membership scheme has done very well so far and plenty of you have joined… but we know that there are still some of you INDIE supporters / users / friends / customers out there who have been a bit shy, for whatever reason… We’d really love for those of you who’ve intended to – but haven’t yet become part of this – to join up soon.

Let’s just make a very INDIE point, here… This place isn’t some exclusive club. You don’t HAVE to be a member to come in and have a drink or a good time. INDIE is still an open place. It’s still be for ANYBODY and EVERYBODY.

Please people, pop in and join. This place is very special and the only place that gets Flag day.

John and David won’t thank me for this but we owe them both so much, so please show them your appreciation next time you see them.

Now we have those pesky musicians.

Our Flag Day band, Los Recyclodores have enjoyed playing Flag Day at the Café so much. Even before we relocated to the Café Indie, the events at the Honest Lawyer were always well received and those who played in them were so proud when people joined in our songs.

So from me, a huge thank you to Paul Vollans, Kevin Brown, Zoe Lucia Newsome, Dave Eugene Webb, Johnathon Webb, Lene Hiltof and Steve Askew who have all played a part in making this event what it is and allowing me to strum along and get that feeling of what it’s like to play in front of a great audience.

In our 1st year at Café Indie we were able to get Ramble Gamble to play a set. They brought Slim Jo Jacksonalong with them to play a busking set of great guitar tunes. I don’t think that they will ever forget that night seeing football fans drinking real ale having a ball to their folk music

Ramble Gamble now have an EP out and they can be contacted by their facebook page if you fancy buying it. You even get some free stickers.

Last year Nick Akesterstepped up and brought along his new band Mama’s Days Are Gone – who were brilliant. Nick’s latest song can be bought for 99p. I’d urge you all to support local musicians like Nick and buy it at the link below.

This year they joined together and formed We Collect Pogs. They were nothing short of brilliant.

We owe them so much. If you want to show your appreciation, Matt from The Pogs and Ramble Gamble is playing at Café Indie this coming Friday supporting the rather amazing Hallouminati.

We’ve always had a special affinity with Local bands and The Café as has Leslie from Wet Records. They managed and brought along Twisted Revolutionto last years party and they went down a storm. Wet Records hold regular Saturday afternoon events at the Café and details of these can be found here. They are also curating this years Party in the Pines so look out for some fantastic local talent being showcased at that particular event.

All the above make the event at Café Indie what it is. They won’t be commissioning cardboard cut outs of themselves to place in the foyer, they just do it because they like it and want to help others have a good time.

Part of the team since 2007, before becoming editor in 2013. Undertaken the role of match summariser during Scunthorpe United live match commentaries for BBC Radio Humberside. Seasonal contributor to football titles FourFourTwo and When Saturday Comes and a finalist at the Football Blogging Awards in 2014.